February 10, 2013

An Australian study has found that injections of cortisone or similar steroids commonly prescribed to treat tennis elbow may alleviate pain more effectively short-term, but actually increase the likelihood that the pain will reappear, compared to other treatments. Dividing subjects into those who got a steroid shot, those who got a placebo shot, those who got a steroid plus therapy, and those who got a placebo plus therapy, they found that after one year 83 percent of the steroid recipients had completely recovered, but so had fully 93 percent of those who got placebo shots and 100 percent of those who got therapy. Moreover, the tennis elbow recurred in half of those in both steroid groups, versus 5 percent of the placebo recipients who got therapy, and 20 percent of those who didn't.

A revolutionary new diagnostic test to detect a deadly cancer has been developed which uses just a pinprick of blood, a dipstick sensor and five minutes time to test for the presence of mesothelin, a biomarker of early-stage pancreatic cancer. The test, which would cost approximately five cents to conduct, would be able to detect the disease years earlier than current tests, which only discover the illness when it is too late to cure. With widespread usage, it could increase the survival rate from the current four percent to nearly 100. It could also be adapted to test for other cancers and for diseases ranging from tuberculosis to Aids. The test won the Gordon E. Moore Award for its inventor, Jack Andraka, a 15-year-old high school sophomore who thought it up during science class.